Wearable Micro Component Health Sensors
7/6/17 Wearable sensors combine computers with our bodies. Companies like Google and Apple are focusing on self-health monitoring. We have already been introduced to things like Fitbit which offer wearable fitness trackers that record our footsteps and heart rate. In the near future these health sensors will evolve into items more complex yet smaller in size. The thought of wearing a bulky bracelet to monitor your heart rate will be replaced with adhesive sensors similar to a sticker. They can be worn on the skin and the material makes them bendable and stretchable, like this prototype from MC10 which senses heart rate and other vital signs.
These breathable, bendable, stretchable devices are, in itself, a hurdle to overcome when designing them. They need to be able to do all of the bending and stretching while keeping all of the micro components inside that make them work from breaking or malfunctioning. Imagine a tiny battery or sensitive sensor being able to move with our skin and nothing inside the component breaks. This is where state of the art technology and novel micro-component expertise come in. Without them, these new technologies wouldn’t exist.
Besides the numerous health benefits and ease of use, wearable health sensors allow patient’s health to be tracked over time, efficiently and without frequent, costly follow up visits to the doctor. This could have a positive impact on healthcare costs. The future of wearable health sensors could help us manage chronic illnesses and chronic pain; they could be an early detection warning of an on-coming illness or episode like a seizure; and they could send daily accurate information to our doctors informing them of things we may not even realize is going on within our bodies.
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